Word: designers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...right--first initial, no period) leading a crusade to make the automobile matter again. Mays is the man who brought us the first car with turn-of-the-century distinction, Volkswagen's alluring "new" Beetle. In 1997 the then 42-year-old Oklahoman was tapped to become chief of design--the youngest ever--at Ford Motor Co., itself in the midst of a crusade to be different, better and above all more consumer focused...
...product is as much about lifestyle, of course, as the car. "Like rock 'n' roll and the movies, industrial design is one of the great art forms of the 20th century, and cars are the very height of industrial design," says Stephen Bayley, one of Britain's leading industrial-design gurus and the curator of a current exhibition on automobiles at London's Royal College of Art. No product but the car demands such elegance in spite of its complexity. No other consumer commodity is expected to be so exclusive and yet so affordable. So personal. So emotional...
...sure are. Consumers these days face a jumble of look-alike products, from toothbrushes and teapots to sport-utility vehicles. So in the battle for our wallets, design has become a more critical component. "With all the noise out there, the trick now is to be as creative as you can in observing and then interpreting your expressive abilities," says Jerry Hirshberg, president of Nissan Design International, which, by the way, has been commissioned to design not just cars but also golf clubs and yachts and, most recently, to remake the Los Angeles Times...
...Today's design revolution extends beyond cars. It is reverberating from Detroit to Madison Avenue, from the automobile right down the product chain to such simple items as trash cans. Design magazines are hot (Architectural Digest is about to launch a new publication called Motoring). Moreover, signature design is no longer the realm of the snobby, afford-anything rich. Ask Martha Stewart, or the prominent architects and furniture and car designers who swap industries these days just to give products that extra mark of distinction. Thus Hirshberg, who began his career as a Pontiac designer, is doing a newspaper...
...designers are turning it, ever more conscious of their increasing influence. "We're not here just to shape a car--we're cultural architects," says Freeman Thomas, who collaborated with Mays on the Beetle and designed the revolutionary Audi TT Coupe before being hired away by DaimlerChrysler this summer. The language of design is all about connecting with people. Or, as Mays says, "it's the battle for their heartstrings...